When pitching the media, position yourself as a resource instead of a sales force. This is particularly important to keep in mind when calling producers or editors to follow up on a PR pitch. Go in with a bullying, used car salesman approach and you’ve already lost the battle. From the media’s perspective, they don’t [...]
Summary: With Pay for Placement chances are you won’t have a campaign focused on delivering your message, or building your brand, but one focused on grabbing as much quick media as possible. This sounds awfully attractive, but in my experience, it is not the way to launch an effective brand-building campaign. There are firms that charge [...]
Synopsis: What most entrepreneurs and companies don’t understand is that often the main job of the PR firm is to find the right story. It’s often not the obvious story that works, because that’s the same angle that the competition will be pitching. Without the right story and tone, you have a weak campaign, at [...]
Synopsis: The mainstream media gives a story credence and validation and then the bloggers and social media sites pass the information along. By combining the two, you reach a huge audience It’s not that mainstream media still matters in the age of blogging and social media; it’s that mainstream media matters even more. Why? Just check out blogs and [...]
Keep your message targeted and focused. You may be well versed on a number of topics, but believe me, you don’t want to pitch the media a Chinese menu. Generally when people assure me that they can discuss everything, I find they have real trouble focusing on anything. Generalists tend to remain just that. The [...]
The once-lonesome trails of the information superhighway are now overly congested and traffic is bumper-to-bumper. This is true not only of the number of Web sites themselves but of the proliferation of Web and dot-com advertisements. The amount has reached critical mass. Every day we are bombarded by dot-com ads. The sheer volume is so [...]
This is no time for an entrepreneur to be media illiterate. Not only is public relations savvy an important insurance policy when it comes to damage control, but, just as a negative image can harm a company, positive media exposure can help build a business, often establishing a company overnight. But no, you protest, you [...]
